Guy Kawasaki and Bill Reichert offer a downloadable excel spreadsheet model for financial forecasts that can be used when pitching a new venture. Also included is useful discussion about the goals for such financial projections.

How Eric Ries developed a scientific method for launching profitable companies

Entrepreneurship is widely recognized as one of the most important drivers of economic growth. But it’s also risky: The majority of new ventures fail, and many end in bankruptcy. Given that track record, when entrepreneurs consider a new international market, they regularly weigh such factors as logistics and differences in cultural attitudes and financial regulations.

But according to this paper, business owners would do well to also consider another crucial but potentially uncomfortable issue: Are the country’s bankruptcy laws friendly or onerous to entrepreneurs?

To cut to the chase, there are two extremes in online dating: eHarmony and Hot Or Not. When you use the former, you provide the data along 29 dimensions to find your soul mate. When you use the latter, you look at a picture and decide if the person is “hot or not” in a few seconds.

When it comes to PowerPoint pitches for your company, think Hot Or Not, not eHarmony. End. Of. Discussion.

This post and PowerPoint outline will enable you to succeed in the real world of presentations to potential investors.

What qualities or ways of thinking characterize the entrepreneurial mind, and can this type of innovative thinking be cultivated in others? Let’s explore some of hallmarks of entrepreneurial thinking to better understand how it works and how we can challenge and adapt our own thinking to achieve better results.

If you had to describe your company’s mission in a single sentence, what would your pitch read or sound like? One good way to summarize what you do and boil it down to one clear sentence is to follow the advice of Founder Institute founder Adeo Ressi. This is how it’s done:

“My company, _(insert name of company)_, is developing _(a defined offering)_ to help _(a defined audience)_ _(solve a problem)_ with _(secret sauce)_”.

Editor's Note: the embedded video is worth a look...

What distinguishes great entrepreneurs? Discussions of entrepreneurial psychology typically focus on creativity, tolerance for risk, and the desire for achievement—enviable traits that, unfortunately, are not very teachable. So Saras Sarasvathy, a professor at the University of Virginia's Darden School of Business, set out to determine how expert entrepreneurs think, with the goal of transferring that knowledge to aspiring founders. While still a graduate student at Carnegie Mellon, Sarasvathy—with the guidance of her thesis supervisor, the Nobel laureate Herbert Simon—embarked on an audacious project: to eavesdrop on the thinking of the country's most successful entrepreneurs as they grappled with business problems. She required that her subjects have at least 15 years of entrepreneurial experience, have started multiple companies—both successes and failures—and have taken at least one company public.

Sarasvathy identified 245 U.S. entrepreneurs who met her criteria, and 45 of them agreed to participate. (Responses from 27 appeared in her conclusions; the rest were reserved for subsequent studies. Thirty more helped shape the questionnaire.) Revenue at the subjects' companies—all run by the founders at that time—ranged from $200 million to $6.5 billion, in industries as diverse as toys and railroads. Sarasvathy met personally with all of her subjects, including such luminaries as Dennis Bakke, founder of energy giant AES; Earl Bakken of Medtronic; and T.J. Rodgers of Cypress Semiconductor. She presented each with a case study about a hypothetical start-up and 10 decisions that the founder of such a company would have to make in building the venture. Then she switched on a tape recorder and let the entrepreneur talk through the problems for two hours. Sarasvathy later collaborated with Stuart Read, of the IMD business school in Switzerland, to conduct the same experiment with professional managers at large corporations—the likes of Nestlé, Philip Morris, and Shell.

Finance Friday’s gets off the ground with today’s post by introducing you to an imaginary startup, the entrepreneurs that we’ll being following throughout the series, and their first challenges: splitting up the founders’ equity and addressing the case where one of the founders provides the initial seed capital for the business.

Understanding the 5 C’s to decide whether to get an MBA.

5 pitfalls for recent grads starting a company

Investors that put money into your company provide a ton of value, both in terms of their capital and all the support/guidance/networking. And what about all those investors that turned you down? They actually can end up providing a lot of value as well, and that's what this post is about.

Joe Abraham, the author of Entrepreneurial DNA: The Breakthrough Discovery That Aligns Your Businesses to Your Unique Strengths, has identified four types of innate entrepreneurial style (basically a person’s “business DNA”) and shows entrepreneurs how to leverage those individual strengths and leadership styles.

Early-stage companies play a vital role in developing the world's latest innovations, as shown in a study presented at the 2011 World Economic Forum. Based on interviews with executives from such top companies as eBay and Microsoft, the study reveals that the similarities in early-stage companies around the globe are far greater than their differences.

People often live by the saying: if you want to get something done right, you need to do it yourself. While I have heard people toss this phrase around like a badge of honor, there is no philosophy more toxic for an organization, especially small businesses. Businesses of any size are complex and it is unrealistic to think that a small number of individuals will have all of the necessary expertise. So how do you determine where to focus your attention?

Start by making a list of all of the activities that your business needs to do. Go to whatever level of granularity feels right. Then, for each activity, rate its passions, skills and value quotient from low to high: high passion activities are those you love to do; high skills activities are those where you have the necessary expertise to execute effectively; and high value activities are those that are strategic to your business.

The result gives you seven different targeting strategies.

I’ve found that it is helpful to break the planning process down into separate topics, and then look at how they fit together in the overall business plan. It’s also a good idea to think of yourself as an investor in your business and review what you come up with from that point of view. Here are the business planning topics that I believe are important, presented in the order in which you should approach them.

Startups. We know the mantra: Team matters. Is this philosophy exaggerated? Overrated? Cliché? No. Team is the only thing that matters. So how exactly do you assemble such a team?

An entrepreneur with a term sheet for investment has a range of decisions to make. Among the most important is which points to negotiate and which points to leave alone. You cannot negotiate every point or you will (a) drive away the investor and (b) fail to concentrate your firepower on terms that do matter.

Business planning advocates will tell you that every business needs a full-fledged business plan, which is certainly true if you’re going to seek outside investors or a small business loan. While it’s beneficial to have one even if you don't seek outside funding, the reality is that many successful businesses launch and grow without a full, formal business plan. However, few businesses succeed without any planning whatsoever.

Planning isn’t something you do just to say you’ve done it and have paper proof. Done properly, planning is an absolutely essential part of business operations. Below are some of the plans every business owner should have, even if informal, and some quick instructions on how to create them. I also recommend you do them in this order, as each one builds on the one before.

Although receiving a venture term sheet to fund your company is a cause for celebration, please consider the various booby traps that it may contain before you break out the party hats. This is a top 10 list of things an entrepreneur should understand about term sheets.

If you're an entrepreneur, you're probably going to screw up at some point. That's ok. Entrepreneurship is a constant process of quickly testing hypotheses, failing, refining and testing again. If you're not failing, you're not learning, right?

Well, not all fails are created equal. Some are wholly unnecessary, and I'd like to list my top 15 here.

Jeffrey Bussgang, author of Mastering the VC Game and a principal at Flybridge Capital Partners, on how to get funded.

Looking for venture capital? Don't be so quick to sign on the dotted line. Here's what you need to know about liquidation preferences and preferred stock.

For those contemplating pursuing a search fund, or investing in one, the CES has created a practical guide to answer the most frequently asked questions. The Primer aims to provide an unbiased view of the benefits and challenges, explains the model from the entrepreneurs' and investors' perspective, and gives many operational and execution tips from previous search fund entrepreneurs.

Venture capitalist Fred Wilson is well known in tech circles for his regular blogging and free advice. He's just wrapped up his "MBA Mondays" series, and it's full of good advice for those looking to start their own business, tech or otherwise.

Wilson basically covers all the questions that an investor, a consultant, or an accountant would ask a business owner to answer in founding and running their company. It's an overview of the kind of courses they teach in basic accounting or business courses at college, but written with a far less stern and academic tone. In The Balance Sheet, for example, Wilson explains the most important items on a balance sheet and how the numbers fit together, even running some quick numbers on Google's balance sheet. Less math-y topics, like forecasting and marketing, are also covered. [Lifehacker Annotation]

Serial entrepreneur Steve Blank usually hears the “Should I get my MBA?” question at least once a month. Here's his answer for those interested in entrepreneurship.